


Found

by aggiepuff, Whedonista93



Series: Zutara Week 2019 [5]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Mermaids, Mutual Pining, Sokka's patented ridiculousness, Zuko is an Awkward Turtleduck, Zutara Week 2019, merfolk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-16
Updated: 2019-08-16
Packaged: 2020-09-02 04:16:38
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20269879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aggiepuff/pseuds/aggiepuff, https://archiveofourown.org/users/Whedonista93/pseuds/Whedonista93
Summary: A fluttering of blue catches Zuko's eye as he passes through the Fire Nation Council chambers...





	Found

A fluttering blue, in stark contrast to the reds it’s surrounded by, catches Zuko’s eye as he passes through the Fire Nation Council chambers. He snatches up the blue ribbon before it gets swept away in the current. The ribbon is plain, Water Tribe blue but the pendant is beautiful, carved of shimmering blue stone. He instantly recognizes it as Katara’s.

“Must’ve come off during the negotiations yesterday,” he mutters. Meetings between the Fire Nation and the Southern Water Tribe have become a lot more frequent since the last Crystal Ball. If Zuko didn’t know better, he would assume Uncle Iroh and Chief Hakoda were negotiating a marriage contract, but Azula had been betrothed since she was sixteen and Sokka was all but betrothed to an Earth Tribe girl - one of their Kyoshi warriors - he’d met at the Crystal Ball. Zuko isn’t stupid enough to let himself hope Chief Hakoda would ever allow Katara to be betrothed to him.

He shakes off the melancholy turn of his thoughts and tries to think of where he might find Katara this early in the morning. It takes him a moment longer than it should but when he remembers he rolls his eyes. Katara wouldn’t be anywhere close to awake this early. It’s their own private joke: she rises with the moon, he rises with the sun. 

Zuko tucks the necklace into his pocket. He’ll return it later, when Katara is awake and less likely to freeze his tail to the floor.

He only just barely remembers to pull it from his pocket when Katara swims through the archway to the royal family’s private coral garden. She’s had permission to use it to practice her waterbending since her first visit and she’s dressed in her practice clothes: a blue breast band and nothing else. Usually she’s in a long, flowing something or other of iridescent sea silk and seeing so much of her warm, brown skin makes his brain blank for a second.

She sees him and blushes. “Oh, Zuko, I didn’t realize you were here. I can-”

“N-no,” Zuko stammers, voice high and tight. He clears his throat and swallows hard. “Sorry. No, you don’t have to leave. Actually, I have something for you.”

Katara swims forward, peering curiously at his open palm. Her blue eyes, always like aquamarines or sapphires, brighten and sparkle upon seeing the necklace but her cheeks flush bright pink. “Thank you, Zuko. I’d thought I’d lost it.”

Zuko’s feels his face heat up but he smiles. “I found it in the Council Chambers this morning.” Then, in a stupidly impulsive surge of confidence he doesn't think he’ll ever experience again in his entire life, he offers, “Here, let me.”

Katara flushes red to her roots but beams at him. Turning, she lifts her mass of dark hair out of the way, exposing the smooth, dark line of her neck and her bare shoulders. Zuko swallows hard. She’s beautiful. Every inch of her, from the soft lines of her shoulders to her trim waist to her sleek, black tail. If he could stay this close to her forever, he would. 

Carefully, gently, he brings the choker’s blue ribbon up and around her neck, fixing it in place and then, well, if his hands hover a moment longer than they need to even the Spirits couldn't blame him. 

Katara glances over her shoulder at him, hair still pulled off to one side. “Done?” 

If Zuko were braver, if he thought for even a moment that she was interested, he’d turn her all the way around and kiss her. 

But he’s her friend. Only her friend.

“Yeah,” he says, trying to calm the hammering of his heart. “All done.”

Katara turns to him, smiling and blushing and looking up at him through her long, dark eyelashes. “Thanks, Zuko. I’ve been worried all morning.” Her fingers gently touch the stone at her throat. “This necklace means a lot to me.”

Zuko rubs the back of his neck, nerves and awkwardness almost overwhelming. “I remember.”

Katara had told Zuko the story of her mother--killed in an ice drake attack when Katara was still a child--when Chief Hakoda brought her to the Fire Nation that first time. Katara was an especially skilled healer and Hakoda thought she could teach and be taught by the palace healers. The trip had been an enormous success but Zuko still remembers, clear as crystal, finding Katara, face tear-streaked and eyes red, hiding in the royal garden on the anniversary of her mother’s death. 

The silence hangs between them, both consumed in memories, possibly even the same one, until, suddenly and  _ very _ loudly, a voice calls, “Yo! Zuko!”

Katara scowls over his shoulder and Zuko turns. Sokka swims toward them, grin wide and unrepentant at having disturbed their moment. If Zuko were a suspicious merman, he’d think Sokka did it on purpose with the way his blue eyes gleam. 

“What do you want, Sokka?”

Sokka smiles at his younger sister. “Just gotta talk to my mer Zuko, here.” He wraps his arm around Zuko’s shoulders and steers him back toward the arch. “We’ll see you at dinner, Sis.”

Sokka keeps steering Zuko, ignoring his protests, until they are alone in a quiet sitting room somewhere in the East Wing. Once they are alone, Sokka turns on Zuko, the smile sliding from his face. “Do you have any idea what you just did?”

Zuko frowns. “Returned Katara’s necklace?”

Sokka waves his hand, dismissing the explanation with a role of his eyes. “Yes, that. Do you know what it  _ means _ ?”

Zuko blinks at Sokka. It was necklace. A necklace didn’t mean anything. What was his friend talking about?

Sokka sighs, long and drawn out and dramatic. “It means  _ everything _ , ash brains. That necklace was a  _ betrothal _ necklace.”

Ice crawls down Zuko’s spine.  _ Betrothal _ ? By the Spirits. Hakoda was gonna kill him. And Katara…

“Wait,” Zuko says slowly, “Katara...she knew…”

Sokka rolls his eyes. If he keeps doing that he’s going to get a migraine, Zuko thinks.

“Of course she  _ knows _ ,” Sokka sighs. “But it was our mother’s necklace so of course she’s not going to hold you to it.” A dangerous glint sparks in Sokka’s eyes and he smiles wickedly. “But I will.”

“What? Sokka!”

But Sokka was already swimming for the day. “I gotta go tell Dad. They gotta start drawing up the con--umph!”

Zuko tackles Sokka to the floor in his frantic rush to stop the other merman from going to find his father. They struggle, Sokka trying to get free and Zuko trying to get to the door to block his path. He pins okka to the ground but Sokka finds leverage and drags himself almost free. Zuko grabs the other merman’s tail and yanks him back. It’s a furious tangle of limbs until, finally, Sokka lets out a strangled cry. “Alright! Alright! I won’t tell Dad!”

Zuko waits a beat, poised on top of Sokka’s back. “Really?’

“Yes,” Sokka sighs into the tile, “really. Now let me up!”

Zuko swims away, placing himself between Sokka and the door, eyeing the other merman warily. 

“Geeze,” Sokka sighs, rubbing his side where Zuko slapped him with his tail, “who knew you didn’t want to marry my sister that badly?”

Zuko scows. “It’s not that I don’t want to marry her,” he grumbles, “I just wouldn’t re-use your mother’s necklace to propose.”

Sokka smirks. “What was that?”

Zuko flushes bright red all the way down to his chest. “Nothing.”

“Sure,” Sokka drawls, grin too wide and too predatory for comfort.


End file.
